Have you ever been given a gift you didn’t want, or didn’t know what to do with? That was now Tim Laughingstock’s dilemma, pretending to be Warden Um of Larry’s Lockup. After he made sure every prisoner had been fed a piece of hum cake, and that all the guards took a bath, trimmed their beards, and exchanged their heavy leather boots for wooden clogs, he didn’t know what to do next.
“Why don’t you let all the prisoners go, and march the guards off a cliff?” suggested Gullet the Ghoul, whom Tim had released and made his secretary. The thought of all those guard cadavers just waiting for him at the base of a cliff sent a shiver of pleasure down his short spine.
“But I have no idea if any of the prisoners are really dangerous or not. Were they all put in here unjustly like me -- like us -- or do some of them deserve to be here?” Tim mused more to himself than to Gullet.
Tim’s perplexity lasted until he went to bed that night, when he dreamed a dream.
In his dream he saw a huge mountainside that was lit up with the words “Exit Interview.” He climbed the mountainside, fought off a few dragons at the top of it, rescued a beautiful maiden, and rode off with her into a forest full of dancing hedgehogs and skinks.
The dream was sent to him by Poorstar, the minor deity that ruled over paperwork and filing cabinets. Now that Tim’s heart was open to heroics, he had been assigned a deity, or a muse, to champion him and guide him. In Tim’s case, that happened to be the god of paperwork. Poorstar was a very minor member of the pantheon of gods -- truth be told, he hadn’t had a client or protege in nearly four hundred years. So he was delighted to be given such a promising young hero to chaperone as Tim Laughingstock. But Poorstar was so out of practice that he couldn’t think of anything to do but send Tim a dream full of humdrummeries.
Still, when Tim awoke next morning he immediately called for his head guard -- Snoozlepuss. This worthy was aroused from his slumbers -- he slept a good deal, and was usually eating the rest of the time -- and quickly pulled on his red shirt, blue trousers, and wooden clogs, and presented himself to Warden Um as smartly turned out as a brass weathervane.
He stood stock still in front of the Warden and saluted with such ferocity that the breeze from his upraised hand blew paper’s off the Warden’s desk.
“Who is considered the very worst prisoner in our lockup?” Tim asked him.
Snoozlepuss did not hesitate in his answer.
“Without a shred of doubt it must be the Thingamabob!” he replied.
“The what?” asked Tim.
“We call him the Thingamabob, sir, because he has been locked up for so long and become so ferocious and uncontrollable that no one remembers his name or where he comes from or why he’s even locked up!”
“I want to see him right now” said Tim calmly. “Send your strongest guards to fetch him and bring him here please.”
Snoozlepuss turned nearly white with fear.
“But, but, sir -- no one has been in his cell in years! We just throw in some soup bones and a bowl of water twice a day, through the grate at the bottom of his door. He howls back at the guards and shakes the door until it nearly breaks in two. I wouldn’t be in the same cell with him for all the owl pies in Boogle Hollow.”
The mention of Boogle Hollow set Tim’s temper ablaze. And it was now a heroic temper.
“Frap mappit, man! I want to do an exit interview with him. If you’re too foozled of him, I’ll go get him myself!” So saying, Tim arose and strode out of the room. Then sheepishly came back to contritely ask the head guard to take him to the Thingamabob’s cell -- since Tim himself didn’t know where it was.
Down, down they went -- past the snarling wombats and the sulking sulfur snails. Into the bowels of the rotten earth they descended -- until the very air turned gritty with a rooting foulness. Their torches guttered in the fetid atmosphere, nearly going out. It stank of stale rust and overboiled cabbage. They arrived at the very most bottom of the very lowest dungeon. There was only one door, and it was heavily padlocked and chained shut. A guttural murmur came from behind it. With quivering fingers, Snoozlepuss unbolted and unchained the door -- then fled back up the stairs in sheer terror -- leaving Tim alone with the terrible Thingamabob. But a man who has faced albino bumperstumpers and ishgobs, not to mention pickled lumdiddles, is not going to back down for some paltry Thingamabob!
Deciding that politeness was just as heroic as rudeness, Tim gently knocked on the thick wooden door and murmured “Would you mind coming out, Thinga . . . er, ah, whoever you are? We seem to have misplaced your records and would like to update them.”
With a tremendously disappointing creak, the heavy wooden door slowly swung open to reveal a perfectly ordinary man -- who was very well-dressed to boot!
Tim lowered his arms, which he had put up to fight off the terrible Thingamabob, to gape like a beached eelpout.
“Allow me to introduce myself” said the well-dressed man. “I’m Sir Cornelius Cornwit Gnawson. I believe my older brother Lawrence is the steward of this dungeon retreat, is he not?”
“Well . . . “began Tim uncertainly. “He rode out a while back to organize guided tours for trees. He felt they needed to travel around instead of standing in the same place all the time.”
“Ah, that sounds like Larry! But, pardon my decayed manners! Who might you be?”
“Oh, I’m the new Warden. Warden Um. Appointed by your brother Larry -- I mean Sir Lawrence.”
“Happy to make your acquaintance, young man. Would you care to step in for a cup of pimento wine and a slice of hazy pudding?”
Tim did not know what to say, so he simply went into the cell -- which turned out to be an elegantly furnished apartment with the sweet smell of mallows and cucumber honey. He sat in a plush upholstered chair, still speechless, as Cornelius puttered about -- at last bringing him a plate of hazy pudding and a full cup of pimento wine. Both of which tasted wonderfully fresh. The prison fare, even for the Warden, was usually potatoes boiled to death with lumps of fatty meat burnt to a crisp. And the potatoes were getting spoiled, since there was a madman in the potato bin who kept hollering he wanted to get out.
When Tim finally found his tongue again, he could not frame his questions in a coherent manner.
“What? Where? How? When do you . . . ? Do you mean to tell me . . . ?”
But Sir Gnawson’s younger brother kindly overlooked Tim’s befuddlement and answered his questions in a few well-chosen words.
“Larry furnished this place for me years ago, so I could pursue my work in peace and quiet. I bang on the door occasionally just to keep the guards from bothering me. Over there is a tunnel that leads to the nearby village of Woolly Willows, where I stroll each day for supplies and fresh air. Since I make no demands on anyone here, I believe dear Larry forgot all about me some time ago. I am perfectly happy and content living and working here.”
Starting to recover from his surprise, Tim finally managed to ask “What kind of work do you do, sir?”
“I am a writer” said Sir Cornelius Cornwit Gnawson “of fantasy novels.”
